Introducing #ScalaThankYou: Be a Part of It!

Dear Scala Friend,
I am going to start a small Twitter campaign to bring positivity into the Scala Community, and I’d love you to be a part of it.

What is “ScalaThankYou”?

ScalaThankYou is a small Twitter campaign in which people send tweets to thank other people or organizations that made a difference in their Scala journey.

Its rules are simple:
– Send one or more tweets to thank people/organizations (even non-scala and non-technical) that made a difference for you.
– 1 tweet = 1 thank you
– Provide details: do not just list names but explain how they managed to help you
– Use the hashtag #ScalaThankYou so we can keep track of the buzz (optional, this is not the point here 😛 )

Why?

This small Twitter campaign intends to:
– show people that the Scala Community has a lot of positivity and goodness (not just dramas!)
– remind everybody that Open Source and Community contributions are typically given on a volunteer basis from people who donate their time and should not be taken for granted
– put a smile on the face of a contributor who may not be having a great day/period (see “Where does this idea come from?”)

Where does this idea come from?

I was at Scala Italy last September, and I was having a terrible day: I had a discussion related to a long-running personal project of mine and discovered that I just had to throw 3 months of work in the bin: I was really demoralized by it…I was having one of those days!

A person came over to talk to me. I thought he was about to ask me “When are you going to finish your book?” or “When are you going to release that library?”: lots of people do! Instead, he thanked me for a specific talk I did 2 years ago, and for an open-source library of mine he uses at work.

This completely unexpected event changed my mood and made my day: I had a smile on my face for the entire day. I also tweeted about it – see https://twitter.com/DanielaSfregola/status/1174967139213565953 and https://twitter.com/DanielaSfregola/status/1174967141054865408.

Also, at the end of ScalaIO a few weeks later, Valentin tweeted about how the community helped him feel better: see https://twitter.com/ValentinKasas/status/1190011329215643655 and https://twitter.com/ValentinKasas/status/1190011334710218753.

I strongly believe this simple campaign could make a real positive impact on a lot of people in our community, and I hope you’ll be a part of it.

Thanks,
Daniela

P.S.: Thanks Oli for your support and help in organizing #ScalaThankYou!